With some of the teenagers from another clan leaving in the morning, Desòchu hopes to get a few more hours to enjoy before resuming his duties with his brother. That meant waiting for his father to come back and hope that he wasn't too drunk.

This week I submitted chapters three and four of Raging Alone to the writing group. There were some good points made but one of the ones that the entire table brought up was the names. I figured that I could use the tool I just wrote to find out how bad it was.

When it comes to projects that I probably will never finish, Author Intrusion is probably right up there. Most of the time, it is because I keep restarting because I learned significant lessons. This last week was one of those cases.

On the fourtheenth days of April, I present another poem for National Poetry Month. Today, the poem is about the conflict between Tachìra and Chobìre, the source of most clan's magic. This also ties into the creation myth for the north western part of the desert.

On the thirteenth day of National Poetry Month, I have a little lullaby. I like cadence poetry a lot more than rhyming. In this case, you have 2/3/3/3 syllable pattern. It also fits the pattern I sing to my kids when they are feeling sick.

For a little sweetness, I wrote a little poem about a trans girl finding a boyfriend. I figured it was a good unicorn chaser to yesterday's poem but also because there are parts of my world that is accepting of trans and queers.

I've organized much of my planned ideas for future novels and stories around three phases related to a world war that marks the passage of Fedran from a world of magic to one of industry and steampunk.

I've decided to participate with National Poetry Month for the first time. In my case, this means I'm going to write a poem a day in April. As with the rest of my writing this decade, these poems are going to be focused on Fedran.

As we are now coming to the end of Flight of the Scions, it's time to work on the next project. The next one is related to my first series, Raging Alone. After spending a week on it, the first chapters are up for patrons.

Returning back to the mill, Kanéko finds the remains of a battle with most of the pack already captured. Maris, on the other hand, hasn't given up as she duels with Sinmak, the man responsible for Kanéko's kidnapping.

Kanéko isn't the only one Damagar threatened. Maris wakes up screaming from the creature's threat to kill her entire pack. Panicked, Maris rushes the others to save her family, risking all three of the teenagers with her impatience.

One of the two panels I did at ICON 43 this year was Using RPG Mechanics to Balance Written Characters. This panel focused using RPG games to supplement the writing process. Along the way, I got to bounce ideas off the audience and crystallized some of my thoughts.

Kanéko, Maris, and Ruben arrive at the Boar Hunt Inn but realize they can't go inside because the mercenaries are still waiting for them. Fortunately for Kanéko, Maris knows about a cabin set some distance from the inn.

Fleeing the indescribable beast who threatened them, Kanéko and Maris have to carry the unconscious Ruben between them. Tempers fray as they realized there is more going on than just releasing a monster from the rocks.

Kanéko wakes up in the morning to find that the rest of the class had left without her, leaving only Pahim alone to catch up with the others. But there are other things waiting for her, including a stern meeting with Falkin for getting the rest of the class drunk.

After days of traveling, Kanéko finally gets a break as they arrive at the Boar Hunt Inn, the center point of their trip. As they approach, she makes plans to hide from Garèo and spend her time with Pahim.

Bruised and humiliated, Kanéko arrives in Rock River. As Garèo is distracted by the appearance of his horse, she is forced to deal with the dog girl. Things go quickly wrong when Maris runs off without warning.

As they head to meet up with the rest of the students, Garèo takes a detour to pick up one of his other students. Kanéko quickly finds herself in trouble with the new student when she can't see beyond the furry ears and tail.

As they head to meet up with the rest of the students, Garèo takes a detour to pick up one of his other students. Kanéko is dismissive until she finds out their destination has a steam-driven saw, one of the very things she found fascinating since she found out she couldn't use magic.

After dragging her heavy chest to the mile marker outside her father's tower, Kanéko finds out that her lies have dragged her further into deception when she meetings up with Garèo, a native brought in to teach her the ways of the desert.

Recovering from the explosion in the stable, Kanéko realizes her father is going to take away her tools while she is on her trip. Desperate to keep going, she decides to do the only thing she could think of: hide them.

Years later, Kanéko is still haunted by that fateful day when she found she had no ability to use magic. Unwilling to accept that, she found a new 's struggle to erase that fateful day have still borne no fruit. Her current passion of puzzling out

Late in manifesting her powers, Kanéko can't wait to find out which magical ability she will have. Could it be her father's earth magic, a simple talent, or something more exotic? Will she be a mage of legends or only the daughter of a local bartim?

Lily's romance is now over. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed the story. This is the first time I've really written a romance and definitely the first time I've ever written anything more than "fade to black".

Even though she is no longer in the High Society circles, Lily still has a chance to go to the party to see how Nirih's dress is presented. Nothing prepares her, however, with what else would happen that night.

At this point, Second-Hand Dresses has been drafted and is now entering the pipeline to get published. This means a couple rounds of editing, then saving up money from patrons to pay for editors and printing, and then actually publishing it.

The dress was beautiful and perfect. No one, even the pickiest of people had nothing to say and Lily could finally relax. But how to you relax the day after it happens? Well, two good friends of hers have an idea.

Today, Alex Penland is releasing their second book, The Letter Mage: Second Quatro. This series is a collection of short and long stories following the 14-year-old Aleph as he infiltrates the departments of the Lunar University, encountering love, espionage, and academia.

As we come up to the end, so do the little threads of Lily's life. This week, she finally finished the dress that has been haunting her for weeks. But she isn't alone, she had friends willing to encourage her through the last few steps, like presenting the dress to her mother and Marigold.

To make it easier to read my chapters and posts, I've hooked up a number of mailing lists to my various websites. This way, you can get the chapters or my blog posts (or announcements if you want them less frequently) directly to your mail box.

Embarrassed at being caught making out with Mindil, Lily sits down with her two lovers to talk about their future. To her surprise, both are willing to accept the other and Mindil even promises her husband. There is only one thing Lily has to do....

Working through the tears of her betrayal to her best friend, Lily dreads hearing the door on her store ring out. There were only two people who would show up, both of them ready to ruin her day. It was just a matter of which one would come.

Lily's perfect morning started as she finished the embroidery on Nirih's dress. She is finally able to focus and the dress was finally coming into shape. However, everything is put into risk when Mindil shows up.

When Lily wakes up with a torn dress and a man face-down in her lap, there really is only one thing she can do: try not to get too excited and take a shower. Of course, even a simple task like that can be fraught with dangers.

Frustrated at her lack of progress, Lily creates the design of the dress she feels will work though it would be scandalous for Mindil to wear such an outfit, much less Nirih. However, as she is considering it, she has an unexpected visitor.

Encouraged by Tabithas, Lily is ready to face Hasan in her house again. This time, she is sure she will be able to resist his seduction and focus on what is important, keeping her business and her honor by following her mother's threats.

At Rose Manor, Lily presents herself to her mother who is furious about Lily not finishing Nirih's dress. Stunned and unable to respond, Lily is berated by her mother who threatens one of the things most precious to Lily if she doesn't complete the dress.

While being driven back to Rose Manor, the full impact of the night before strikes Lily. She realizes that she had betrayed Mindil's trust by sleeping with Hasan and the guilt seems to stab her in the loneliness of the carriage.

Hasan serves Lily a feast that sets the stage for her own struggle with her lusts. It doesn't take too long before her ill-fated attempt to relieve her passions backfire and she finds herself falling into the man she had fallen for.

This week's naughty chapter is about Lily coming home to find Hasan cooking dinner for him. Unexpected, she finds that she wants him even more and her resolve to avoid cheating with Mindil rises up until she is forced to take matters into her own fingers.

This week is a lovely chapter filled with positive things for Lily including increasing the services she can to offer, kissing Mindil, and learning more about herself. At the same time, we find out Mindil has to go away for a few days to retrieve her children; this triggered a brief conversation about children in polygamous relationships.

I had some technical difficulties this week, so it is a short posting again. This week, Lily is happily working on her dress when she is interrupted once again. This time, it is from Margiold who is in a fury because her daughter's dress isn't done weeks before it was done. Unreasonable? Probably. However when Lily breaks down, she finds comfort from an unexpected source.

This week is a sweet little chapter of Lily and Kendrick meeting together in the middle of a water-soaked road, completely with drawn swords and explosions. It ends well, as most of this novel, but it lets me enjoy my favorite weather: rain.

Apparently I wanted to talk about the process of world-building, in specific exploring the repercussions of changing hair color in my world to fit with the image I want instead of what I started with. It lets me move to a world that I want now without breaking the world I've already published. Oh, and Lily goes on a walk.

This week, I talk about world-building the ideals of beauty and creating characters who buck those trends. Plus, poor Lily can't get a break on her overwhelming projects when Mindil comes with a surprise interruption of teasing and sweets.

This week is a short chapter, mostly a little tease about Lily's and Kendrick's relationship. It also heaps up some distractions up on poor Lily, but she manages to actually complete something and give him a little extra to make his life easier.

This week I talk about Kendrick's stalking, why I like teasing scenes, and briefly only female masturbation in romance novels. I also introduce the chapter where some of Kendrick's secrets come out to reveal a more complicated man.

This week we introduce a potential conflict of the novel and the reason for Kendrick's difficulties. We'll find out later what Relik da Martin ne Golid has over Kendrick. For the time being, just a little gentleman's introduction into the story.

Well, my vacation is all over and I had a blast. I was up in northern Wisconsin for two weeks with coming home in time to do an author event at the local mall. I got a lot done, but time to change gears and focus on commissions for a week or three.

This week, we are introduced to the fourth (and final) person that is going to be in the core of Lily's life for the novel. Mindil is a much different character than the others, both in her original purpose but also how she's grown across the novel.

This short chapter is there to show the passage of time because I really dislike montages in writing. Actually, I don't like them much of anywhere. However, I wanted to show that she is moving forward with Nirih's dress, which is a "backbone" of the tension in this novel.

Since this is a short, steamy little scene between Lily and Hasan, it is a good time to talk about Hasan being a married to Mindil while kissing Lily. I like this scene because it shows that Hasan has poor control over Lily when it comes to his passion and Lily is no less than receptive of them for her own reasons. It is also intimate and personal, something that both crave at this moment.

This week, Kendrick comes back and interrupts Lily. I also write a little bit about creative/writer's block, romance in restrictive societies, and the bad luck of having a failed duel means to a young woman.

This week introduces our second love interest for the novel, Hasan. Lily's life gets more complicated as the two men who were responsible for her not being chosen for a wife have come back into her life, months before she officially becomes a kudame.

Well, it's Sunday and time to switch gears on writing projects. I found it easier to treat my overwhelming number of projects as iterations like software development. Work from Monday to Sunday, then decide the next project (which may be the same one). Unfortunately I have some obligations that need to be completed by the end of the month so I have to stop writing Second-Hand Dresses.

After a few weeks of voting over on Patreon and my forum, the next novel selected is Second-Hand Dresses. This is a much different piece than Sand and Blood and its sequels in that it is a romance and drama piece with little violence and a good and proper Happily Ever After.

After thirty-five weeks, I've finished serializing Sand and Bone. The novel has been completely edited and posted. It is released as Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. On the website, you can download the EPUB, MOBI, and PDF versions of the book. Or you can just read the chapters right on the website.

We are now at the penultimate chapter of the novel. Only one more left before we get to the end. This is also one of the more emotional chapters for me because it puts a capstone on one of the longer threads that ran through the entire trilogy.

We are rapidly heading over to the end of the novel, only three more chapters including this one. We also get to revisit two characters who were influential in Rutejìmo's life as they get one last chance to give their respects and encouragements.

A year ago, at one of my more successful panels at WisCon, I was on a panel with K. Tempest Bradford and Kristine Smith talking about writing processes. I got to see a lot of cool gadgets but I also got a chance to talk about my processes of writing with Markdown, YAML, and Git.

So, it's been a long time since I've done anything with Second-Hand Dresses but a number of folks on Wattpad stumbled on it so I was feeling guilty about not updating it. This evening, I did a little organization on the first chapter, split it in a half, and then merged it with the first section of the next chapter.

It's hard to believe that I'm near the end of the book. Only a few more chapters left. I'm betting I can abuse Rutejìmo a little more before the end though, besides there are a few plots (but not all) to finish up.

I've always said that Sand and Bone was inspired by Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven. I love samurai dramas for many reasons, one of them is you don't always know who is going to survive the piece. At the same time, there are very few "cheap" deaths. For a warrior, the noble sacrifice is one of the best ways to die.

Over the last few months, I've brought up the words that Gichyòbi had said about how he was encouraged to save Rutejìmo from violence. This same encouragement was one (but not the only) reason that Mikáryo took pity on him back in Sand and Blood. Well, this chapter is why that aspect of the world came into place, all of those ideas and little bits paved the way for this chapter.

I've thought a lot about my master plot, the different threads and stories that weave together into where I'm going. Even thought Sand and Bone is a single point-of-view novel, it is part of a master plot that I hope to see some day. I'm just doing it novel-by-novel instead o scene-by-scene. However, there is a drawback of thinking about stories too much and I'm afraid of burning out the idea before it can be pried out of my skull.

There are moments in life when everything wears you down and you don't think you can move forward. This week, Rutejìmo is experiencing one of those moments as he focuses on burning a body before continuing his journey. I also talk about how the same death march has affected me in my life. Finally, a status update on the Sand and Bone publication process.

This week, I write a little bit about the history of Wamifūko, their shattered mountain that used to be a fortress, and their rites of passage. There is also a question about world-building and these weekly posts. Finally, Sand and Bone gets into chapter 25 as Rutejìmo has to escape the city to burn the body of his wife's mother.

This week, I talk about the limitations of third-person limited as it pertains to the master plot. Also, the problem with dragons coupled with why Damagar didn't destroy Kanéko in Flight of the Scions. Finally, an update on the finalization process of Sand and Bone.

Along with the others, Rutejìmo ends up running for his life. He sees his friends and families for what might be the last time before he sets off on his own perilous journey. Before he goes, however, his brother has one last thing.

We are now into the second arc of Sand and Bone, where things start to speed up greatly and the bloodbath is going to commence. While I'm setting it up, I talk a little bit about pacing for the book and how I use the HERO System to manage my fantasy.

I'm done to only a single weekly serial right now and we pick right up at chapter seven where Rutejìmo learns that all the pain he suffered in the last book comes with an interesting yet terrifying benefit.

I never realized how hard it is to reintroduce characters on the third book of a series. At the same time, I love writing about mature characters. On the other hand, I also have a chapter about a very immature young woman and her awareness of psychics.

Well, this is the end. Yeah, it's a week early, but I decided to post the final two chapters at once. It is a sad moment for me, mainly because there is a lot of me in this novel but I'm also glad that I got a chance to do this.

In Sand and Ash, I realized that I'm already foreshadowing the third book of the series while Rutejìmo finds unexpected allies while he was dead. In Flight of the Scions, Kanéko meets one of the few healers I plan on ever writing for this world.

A dark chapter for poor Rutejìmo who is dealing poorly with being home but ignored. For Kanéko, a bright chapter as she approaches the Boar Hunt Inn. And a bit of discussion about miscarriage and depression.

Happiness is a hard thing to find, more so for characters in my world. Rutejìmo finds stability while being dead, alternating between working hard hours and spending time with his love. Kanéko, on the other hand, is humiliated in front of everyone including the boy she is falling for.

I rarely think about what I'm writing. Call it intuitive or just being a pantser. I wasn't thinking when I wrote this chapter, but it ended up being the first time I've used a phrase that would be the hallmark of the rest of the series.

Chapter twelve will be an uncomfortable one for some readers, but one that I think is critical for the story and plot. It is violent and sad, but one that sets Rutejìmo on a path that he needs to travel.

Back in 2011, I wrote a humorous fantasy story called Best of Enemies. It had a six month exclusive contract, but I had forgotten it until a few days ago. Since it won't be published anywhere else, here it is.

One of the complexities of authors is their names. I want to avoid making an assumption of how they are displayed and used. At the same time, I want to reuse the logic to handle character names within the story.